12.19pm: Morning, campers. Shaping up to be another scorcher here at Camp Bestival, with everyone recovering from last night's epic disco set and looking forward to today's main event, the Happy Mondays - including vocalist Rowetta, who just posted this on Twitter:

1.00pm: Here's Paul Lester on Saturday's events at what not enough people are referring to as 'Camp B':

Festival organiser Rob Da Bank popped by Guardian HQ during the day yesterday to explain the rationale behind the disco extravaganza that was Saturday night at Camp Bestival, but I was too busy moaning to him about the lack of original members in Earth Wind & Fire to remember what he said. Something about thematic sequencing. Thematic sequencing at music festivals is surely the way forward. Next year: a power pop stage, please, featuring The Raspberries, Cheap Trick and The Knack.

Anyway, RDB themed well this year. He got the big guns for the disco night. Earth Wind and Fire, Chic and Kool & the Gang. You can't argue with that lineup. I did wonder whether the bands themselves argued about who would go on in which order, but Rob reckoned having the same promoter for all three ironed out that potential wriggle.

No, there was nothing wrong with Rob's choices. These are the Dylan, Beatles and Stones of disco, although which is which I haven't quite decided. Suffice to say it was quite a thrill to step out of my bedroom yesterday morning (well, lunchtime) and trip over the luggage belonging to Al McKay. One of Earth Wind and Fire! The kings of cosmic boogie! Staying in my B&B! You'd expect a Travelodge at least.

That thrill was short-lived when I discovered that McKay is the only original member of EW&F in the band, or at least the iteration of the band onstage last night. No one expected founder member Maurice White (he's 70 and been ill for years), but no Verdine White? No Ralph Johnson? No Philip Bailey?? Nobody does a soul falsetto like Phil Bailey ("Hey, what about me?" - a passing Smokey Robinson).

This was, effectively, a tribute act, so you can sort of see why probably the biggest black American band of the '70s might have been put on a bill below Chic and Kool. I did worry at first whether there might be a Supertramp scenario where one of the original ex-communicated players refuses to give the remaining ones permission to play the hits, but that fear was quashed as soon as the band launched into In The Stone. The version was proficient enough, but knowing that not just Mick Jagger but Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts weren't onstage (leaving just Ian Stewart) somehow spoiled the enjoyment, although the crowd, peppered with people in joke Afros, giant shades and flared one-piece pant suits, didn't seem to mind watching the sublime EW&F songbook reduced to kitsch karaoke.

There was, to be fair, only one original member of Chic onstage next also, but seeing as how it was Nile Rodgers, who wrote, produced and arranged all the hits - not just for Chic but for the music they tailor-made for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Debbie Harry, Duran Duran, David Bowie and Madonna - it seemed more than acceptable. And besides, it's hardly his fault bass supremo and writing/production partner Bernard Edwards and powerhouse drummer Tony Thompson are dead.

Rodgers looked immaculate in his white suit and dreads - he looked dressed for a 21st century version of Studio 54, not a field in Dorset - and it was clear he would be controlling proceedings tonight, like a conductor who also happened to be the composer as well. The Chic girls were a bit heavy on the passion and melismas, but their outfits - especially the one wearing half-trousers, half-hotpants - were a hoot. And somehow it didn't seem to matter that the party atmosphere, and the calls from Nile to "put your hands together, y'all", were entirely at odds with the high melancholy quotient of Chic's music. I Want Your Love may have lost some of its magic as a monument to solipsist sorrow, but it survived, just.

Whatever happened to dance music you can cry to? This was a class above EW&F, a class above anything else at Camp Bestival this year, a masterclass in musicianship that approximated the propulsive momentum of machines. Nile's famous choppy rhythm guitar work was particularly fine, and he was clearly relishing the opportunity to stake his claim to godhead status, which he richly deserves. "Every song is our song," he told the crowd. "Chic are not a covers band. I've heard people say before, 'How come they're playing a Diana Ross song and a Duran Duran song?' Well, they were all written by me for Chic!"

The band proceeded to play a medley of I'm Coming Out and Upside Down, from the glorious autumnal blue period of Chic's golden age, as well as He's The Greatest Dancer and We Are Family, even Lady, the Modjo hit from 2001 based on a sample of Chic's Soup For One. They actually played the latter, too, with its examination of the emptiness of the glamorous life ("Why must I be so depressed/ I feel I'm not like the rest... When you're all alone, in your hefty home") as cutting as Ferry's lyrics for Roxy Music, the band that first inspired Chic to form. They did Bowie's Let's Dance, Duran's Notorious and Madonna's Like A Virgin, all Rodgers productions, and best of all they did Spacer by Sheila and B Devotion, which despite its ridiculous lyrics ("He's a spacer, a star chaser") remains arguably the apotheosis of the Chic Organisation's rhythmic elegance. There was a brief segue into Beyonce's Single Ladies that reminded us Chic were the missing link between Motown and today's R&B super-producers, with Rodgers a '70s/'80s precursor to Pharrell/Timbaland/The-Dream. This captivating set climaxed with a quick run-through of Rapper's Delight, the hit based on the bassline from Chic's Good Times that served to kick-start the hip hop era, and Good Times itself, which saw Rodgers, 59 and only just given the all-clear from cancer, beaming massively as he pogoed across a stage full of kids and random revellers - including Jordan and Harley of Rizzle Kicks as well as a host of tattooed bearded roadies - invited up especially for the occasion. It was like seeing Funkadelic at their most groovesome infected by the juvenile dementia of Flaming Lips. It was joyous and genius.

It was crazy tonight when I got tens of thousands of folks jumping up in sync. What a sight!

Headliners Kool and the Gang were going to have to give it some to top that. Like EW&F they suffer from STOM (Spot The Original Member) syndrome. Like Chic, they do still have their founder member and creative force, Robert "Kool" Bell, with them, but he was never the radical innovator that Nile Rodgers was, more of a consummate professional capable of riding a series of commercial waves, notably the funk one of the early-'70s and the disco one of the late-'70s. In fact, KatG had the longest run of hits, at least in this country, charting high well into the mid-'80s (unlike Rodgers, who only charted with his productions for other artists, not with Chic), hence perhaps the decision to have them top this bill.

They opened their set with Fresh, from 1984, maybe to make this point. The crowd seemed a little disengaged, paying more attention to a flying lantern and giant balloon with a smiley face floating into the night sky. The music, too, was fuzzy and indeterminate compared to the crystalline clarity of Chic, and none of the band managed to get the tone right. The singer, with his unctuous addresses to "the ladies", seemed to believe he was in a Home Counties nightclub in 1978, and although performances of Jungle Boogie, Open Sesame and Hollywood Swinging reminded those that cared that Kool were once gritty funkateers ahead of their transition to purveyors of smooth mainstream disco lite, the increasingly cold masses just wanted the hits to match the huge glittering disco ball suspended above the stage.

Finally, they came: Get Down On It and Celebration won the crowd over at last, and the field erupted in a frenzy of terpsichorean manoeuvres worthy of Travolta himself. But there's no doubt who won Camp Bestival's great 2012 Battle of Disco.

1.15pm: Mark Beaumont writes:

Sunday morning and a tide of mania sweeps Camp Bestival as the kids all realise there's only one day left of the world's best holiday camp and scramble for larks like the world's last Haribo. And me? I'm still a little dazed from wandering over from last night's disco dance-off on the Castle Stage into the surrealist maelstrom of the Big Top, where DJ Yoda had recruited a brass orchestra of cross-dressing Bavarian panto stars called The Transiberian Marching Band to parp atonally along to famous hip-hop riffs, Money For Nothing and the Inspector Gadget theme.

They were certainly a hit with Mawgan's hen do, waving an inflatable Alan Partridge above the frugging throng and almost dragging this blog off in an inadvisable dregs-stealing direction. Happy honeymoon day, girls.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs were no less thrilling, with the wonderfully named Orlando Higginbottom crunching out delectable techno twinkles and industrial marching tunes dressed as Ming The Marbleless, accompanied by robo-Catwomen wielding confetti cannons. It was refreshing to see a DJ actually pick up a mike and sing too, rather than employing the usual backroom-bloke trick of recruiting a plethora of guests and hype men to do the sweaty work for them. Whatever next – a girlband that stays in tune all by themselves?

After such a frazzling evening, it was perhaps inadvisable to start the day trying to eat a breakfast sausage bap along to Henry Rollins' breathless spoken-word diatribe about eating rat livers in India, grappling cottonmouths in Pentecostal churches in Kentucky and men being half-eaten by alligators in the Florida swamplands. Did someone say something about The Fantastic Mr Fox: The Opera? That's got to be a stomach-calmer…

And here's a sneak preview of tonight's sound-and-light show, right after the Happy Mondays:

Camp Bestival is one of the highlights of my year - I had an excellent time directing the projected animation for the Festival's finale show in 2011 and am glad to be back making a new show. Festivalgoers can expect to see our sporting animated animals pump iron, pole vault, lift up the castle and bring the whole castle down with arrows and ping pong balls!My favourite moments have been DJ Yoda's ace audio visual show, some joyous jiving in the Spiegel Tent and most of all, just walking around, you never know what performance you might run into. Kate Genevieve, Chroma Collective

For our final update of the day, here's here's Mark Beaumont on today's proceedings:

With wheel-to-wheel barriers of buggies blocking anyone from getting close enough to hear Rolf Harris on the Castle Stage and having been unceremoniously rebuffed from Classic Album Sundays' oversubscribed listening of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here in the castle like it's Bloc Festival or something, it's back to the Guardian portacabin for refuge, and to catch my breath on the most bizarre day at Camp Bestival so far.

Little Roy, taking the Mr Tumble slot of the day, interspersed his reggae rewrites of Baa Baa Black Sheep – Bongo Nyah, the first ever Rasta Number One released in 1969 when Roy really was little – and toytown politicising on Tribal War with selections from his recent Battle For Seattle album of Nirvana covers. Amazingly his takes on About A Girl and Polly retain a sense of damage in Roy's hands, avoiding sounding like mere novelty reggae pastiche even when a smiling Roy mimes a spinal ache during the line "Polly says her back hurts", a song about abduction, torture and rape. Kurt must be skanking in his grave…

The new soul-pop girl next door Lianne La Havas stole hearts with her sunny but vulnerable demeanour, her jazz songs about being chased by sugar daddies ("Is it such a problem that he's old/As long as he does what he's told?") and moving, maudlin break-up ballads like No Room For Doubt and Forget.

So amazing to watch @liannelahavas performing one of my favourite wee songs 'Elusive' by Scott Matthews. I heart her!!! #campbestival

Hers are songs that thrive from a subdued delicacy and under-emotion, but it proved tough to stay riveted to what's essentially background music, so I inevitably head over to the Big Top halfway through to catch Michael Winslow – aka Jones from Police Academy and The Man Of 10,000 Sound Effects – recreate an entire intergalactic fight scene from Star Wars, Jimi Hendrix's 1969 Woodstock set and an imagined scenario of Snoop Dogg and Mary Poppins taking a 'fly ride' in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, all using only a microphone and single set of tonsils.

As he finishes with a spot-on Tina Turner impression, it seems everyone's got a funk superstar lurking within them. Even celebrated tripedal marsupial-restrainer Rolf Harris, who enters to a Kool And The Gang-style medley of his hits and a hype man yelling "can you tell who it is yet?" It's quite lovely to see Rolf expanding his role as Australian cultural ambassador by bringing Aboriginal and Aussie folk music – Kangaroo, Boys, etc - to the student unions of Britain to now take in Irish and Afro traditionals too, piling through The Irish Rover and Aiko Aiko with his charming semi-comic aplomb. And it was great to be reminded of his role in the development of early psychedelic dronetronica, as his Number Two hit Sun Arise unravelled like a post-Velvets ayahuasca anthem.

The massed Rolf crowd had largely dispersed by the time King Creosote & Jon Hopkins took the stage, but Kenny 'Creosote' Anderson was unflustered. "I took a photo of Rolf's set-list and sent it to my dad," he admits between gleaming shanties on acoustic, piano and harmonium that lilted with Stornaway's authenticity, The Lilac Time's melodicism and the raw romantic edge of his Celtic brogue, cutting through the heartbreak. It was all a bit too downbeat for some though. "Have you got his album?" asked Jenny, a teacher from Lincolnshire who'd been canvassing the field's opinion on the act. "Do you listen to it with a razor blade poised over your wrist?"

As I write, Scroobius Pip is shredding the afternoon's chill with some rap metal poetry in preparation for The Happy Mondays setting every under-ten in Dorset a bad example as tonight's headliners. But here our blog must end - you can read my review of the entire festival online and in the Guardian on Tuesday.

Were you in the crowd watching Rizzle Kicks at Camp Bestival? They played the Main Stage on Saturday and we were there to take a massive 360 degree photograph from the stage. Spot yourself! Tag yourself on Facebook! Zoom in on the singer's nose! It's a lot of fun ...